I have been working at Hitachi Consulting full-time (more than 3 years)

Pros

Lots of peers around the same age, interests. When starting out of college, everyone is joining at the same position and going through the same training and intro to work. You meet a lot of great people and learn a lot.

I have been working at Hitachi Consulting full-time (more than 8 years)

Pros

Hitachi consulting offshore is good for place to work for new college graduates, as they get quite good exposure very quickly. The sierra Atlantic management is good in catering your personal career goals.

The company has a open-door policy overall, you can reach upper levels of management very easily. The social scene is nice for younger employees.

Cons

If you are looking to start a consulting career where you gain exposure to multiple businesses, and learn and apply your skills on short-term projects, this is definitely not the company for you. At least not in the LA region, and especially not if you're technology-focused. You will be put in a long-term project where you will stay for upwards of 2 years, driving to some LA suburb, and working on boring projects using aging technology. Think you will have more flexibility at a smaller firm, and get a more personal experience? Wrong, do yourself a favor and accept that offer at the bigger firm. Don't make the mistake like me and waste these crucial early years of your career.

Advice to ManagementAdvice

Give your lower level employees the mobility to move around projects. That is what they joined a consulting company for.

I have been working at Hitachi Consulting full-time (more than 3 years)

Pros

1) Exposure to many clients2) Relatively stable company3) Exposure & networking with other Hitachi companies (although this is by chance).4) Learn project management in practice

Cons

1) Too much administrative overhead2) Despite many processes designed to give transparency in promotion process, the current process is very shady3) Management is unable to fully take advantage of other Hitachi sister companies4) Identity crisis between technology consulting & management consulting5) Unwilling to invest in staff education & the current training is useless & not in touch with technology sector

The people I worked with at Hitachi Consulting were, with only a few exceptions*, smart, motivated, reliable and fun, and a job like this is only bearable when you have great teammates, due to the heavy travel, long hours and sometime difficult clients and nightmare projects. Of course some projects go well, are exciting, and teach you a bunch of new things, and my experience was that even the trainwrecks were rarely the fault primarily of Hitachi--a terrible client will undermine even the best consultants' efforts to help them.**

Hitachi Consulting tries (sometimes a little too hard, but that's better than indifference) to foster a cohesive corporate culture and make people feel connected to others in the regional practice (about 150 people at the time I was there), which can be tough when people are staffed on long projects at far-flung client sites. I didn't entirely appreciate this aspect of the company until I worked at Deloitte Consulting where it's so easy to feel like a cog in an enormous and very hierarchical machine.

If I ran into a technical problem that wasn't easily resolved I could send a broadcast message to the member of the relevant competency and people were great about taking time to reply with useful information and helpful advice, even though they were often across the country and we might never have met in person. In the case of problems tricky enough to require a collaborative approach to solving, people regularly carved out time from their already busy days, staying late or missing lunch, to do a web-ex or whatever was needed to help out.

I also appreciated that there was a minimal amount of the three P's (Pettiness, Politics and Power-trips—hey, I just coined a phrase!) compared with some places I've worked. And although the annual review and career management processes were cumbersome and time-consuming, they were worth it because of the objectivity and transparency the detailed exercise lent to a process that can be woefully opaque, if not plainly arbitrary at some jobs.

Cons

*One of the exceptions I mentioned in the Pros section happened to be my designated Career Advisor. Bummer.

**I also mention in the Pros section the fact that Hitachi had its share of troubled projects, as well as my perception that the majority of blame usually belonged more to the chronically difficult clients where they those projects went on than to HCC. The problem was that Hitachi Consulting would never walk away from that type of client; they were just too desperate for the work. They were always in tough spot, trying to compete for the same big projects as the household-name big-four firms, and the same small projects (at least in my competency) as the specialized boutiques, with low overhead and rockstar consultants, and it was tough for them. The old cliché is that nobody ever lost their job for hiring IBM (I might be paraphrasing). So Hitachi had to undercut the bigger firms on rate to be in the running, and they had to take the dysfunctional clients that weren't worth the trouble they cause to the Accentures of the world.

The other problem with that, from an employee's perspective, is that to bid for the same work as Deloitte or Accenture, but with a enough discount to differentiate themselves, Hitachi had to keep salaries way down compared to those firms. It's a testament to their college-hire recruiting, their non-fiscal retention efforts, and the appeal of a no-travel local model (since abandoned) that they had such a high-caliber group of people willing to work for less than they could have gotten at a big firm. I imagine that for most of those people, the promise of not having to travel every week was a worthwhile trade-off for the smaller salary

But my experience was much less positive, and by any reasonable measure I was badly underpaid at Hitachi Consulting. When the Great Recession sent everyone's business into a tailspin in late '08 and early '09, I (along with a majority of HCC employees not RIF'ed outright) was offered a choice of furlough (no work, receive 30% of salary plus UI) or a decent severance. I took the latter and was promptly hired by Deloitte, where my first year compensation represented a NEARLY 50% INCREASE from what I made my last year at Hitachi—and this was at the absolute low-point of the most severe economic downturn in 70 years. So I think it's fair to say I was below market value. Yet they never would have adjusted me to a fair amount. I was promoted from Sr Consultant to Manager/Architect after a year and got less than an $8K pay raise, and was still in the five-figures, less than I'd been making in 2000 at an industry job with <10% travel.

I only accepted the original offer from Hitachi because the local model was supposed to mean being home every night and because I had a one-year-old daughter. So as mentioned, that seemed like a reasonable trade-off, given that most consulting jobs require constant travel (though there are notable exceptions, like Slalom where a lot of Hitachi people now work). Unfortunately the VP who hired me couldn't sell any work in the local market, so if I wanted to be utilized at all it turned out that I was flying all over the country, pretty much the entire time I worked there.

Fully half of my projects were in the Eastern time zone, which is a killer if you live in California because you have to fly out Sunday instead of Monday morning. Say goodbye to half your weekend every single week.That was a big enough drag later on when Deloitte made me do the same thing, but at least they were paying me for it; it really stunk to be doing the same work, with the same travel obligations, but at the paltry Hitachi Consulting "local model" salary I'd accepted in the belief that I'd see my wife and daughter every day in exchange.

I have been working at Hitachi Consulting full-time (more than 5 years)

Pros

-People are engaged and willing-Company has a well articulated vision-Leadership is accessible, at least on a geo level

Cons

-ELT is out of touch with what it takes to motivate and retain its knowledge center, meaning its employees-Leadership keeps messaging that employees will be given more while taking more away from the. For example, they promised higher salaries, salaries have not noticeably increased. They promised more perks, but instead reduced cell phone expense cap.-Compensation model is terrible-Leadership expects employees to sustain the geography by taking on additional tasks, but again, because the compensation model doesn't reward that participation appropriately, culture and enthusiasm for the firm is waning

Advice to ManagementAdvice

Begin by not treating your employees as if they are expendable. The future is all based on retaining and building upon knowledge and your existing employees are the most well-positioned to help the company grow and achieve its vision. It's more frustrating knowing our parent company is so wealthy, yet employees are so poorly compensated for their work and effort in building the firm.

I have been working at Hitachi Consulting full-time (more than a year)

Pros

Great work-life balance: you can take days off without worry. Managers are very understanding about personal time and will generally allow you to flex your schedule as needed. Depending on project, hours can be moderate. Management is easily accessible, I've had numerous lunches with VPs and Directors.

Cons

For those looking to travel, don't live in Southern California and be a junior consultant - it's very unlikely. Pay is lower than industry standard. Staffing can be a nightmare if you are not marketing yourself to VPs and Directors. Need to build a brand to get staffed quickly.

Advice to ManagementAdvice

Make staffing process easier and more transparent. Make a push for junior consultants to get staffed across the country by subsidizing initial cost of travel to client. This will lead to more experienced consultants that can be sold more quickly in the future.